Five years after Sandy Hook and the exact same event could happen again — in exactly the same way.  What happened in Columbine can happen today.  And Las Vegas.

And they do happen.  Every day.

Because the MAJORITY of Americans — NOT gun owners — are in the thrall of the MINORITY of Americans — gun owners.  Of all the rights enumerated in the Constitution, there’s something about the Second Amendment that makes gun lovers — and people with poor reading skills feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

They insist that the Second Amendment basically says ‘Have All The Guns Ya Can Eat, Dude!’  Except… that NOT what it says.  Nowhere.

What it DOES say is this:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms shall not be infringed.”

That’s 27 total words.  Takes till word 23 to get to ‘Arms’.  But if you look back at words two through four — ‘Well regulated Militia’ — you get the CONTEXT in which the Arms are understood to be ‘kept’ and ‘bearable’ by ‘the people’ — as part of a WELL REGULATED MILITIA.  Now — to drive that point home, the authors of the amendment set off the next section of the sentence WITH A COMMA.  That’s not insignificant.  That Militia is ‘necessary to the security of a free State’.  The MILITIA is the ‘guiding principle’ for everything that follows — IT’S HOW THE SENTENCE IS WRITTEN.

In the context of a well regulated Militia — THEN and only then do the people have a right ‘to keep and bear arms’.

Now — that raises the question that we’ve never answered — who or what is this MILITIA?  In the abstract — it’s the People:  WE are the Militia.  We are its members.  And therefore — as the Militia is “well regulated” — we ARE THE AUTHOR OF ITS RULES — the ‘Regulators’ of the Militia.

And if it isn’t us — then WHO is it?  And we  need to see THEIR rules — cause the Constitution says they have to have them.

One last thing — about the way the Second Amendment is written.  In relation to Arms, it says the people have the right to “KEEP” and “BEAR” them.  I do not see the word “OWN” anywhere.  And don’t tell me that the Amendment’s author was using ‘Keep’ or ‘Bear’ in place of ‘Own’ because ‘Own’ was a perfectly good word at the time and got pretty regular use.  If they had wanted to mean that Americans could OWN guns, they would have used that word.  But they didn’t.  They used ‘Keep’ and ‘Bear’ — probably because (and I’m extrapolating here) they figured that ‘The well regulated Militia’ would be the actual OWNER of those arms.

Bonus points.  Where in the Second Amendment does it refer to any citizen’s right to ‘keep’ or ‘bear’ ammunition for those arms?  It doesn’t.  And the only way you can GET the UNSPECIFIED AMMO into those WELL REGULATED ARMS is via the Militia.

And if the People are the Militia?  If we could only learn to ‘read’ — we could show the NRA that there’s a new Law in town now.  And it’s a lot like the ‘old law’.  Only the way the Old Law is actually written…